Mount Vernon archaeologist’s passion earns her lifetime achievement honors from Iowa office
You might say Leah Rogers’ long career in archaeology revolved around hands and pens.
Her hands dug into the earth at excavation sites ranging from an early military fort in Indiana to antebellum townsites in Mississippi to Pueblo field schools in Colorado. Not to mention nearly every corner of Iowa.
And her pen meticulously recorded the results. Her name appears on more than 240 reports in the National Archaeological Database maintained by Arizona State University, with nearly 200 more filed with the State Historic Preservation Office of Iowa.
Over the past four decades, she’s prepared nearly 100 nominations for the National Register of Historic Places.
It’s no wonder the Mount Vernon woman will be presented this weekend with the Petersen-Harlan Lifetime Achievement Award from the State Historical Society of Iowa at its annual Preserve Iowa Summit in Mason City.
For Rogers, it is all part of pursuing a field she has found personally interesting and fulfilling.
“One of my grandmothers was into archaeology, so I probably got it from her,” she told me. “But also, from National Geographic. I always read the archaeology articles over and over.”
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Rogers grew up in Missouri, earned her undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of Missouri and a masters from Michigan State. After working with firms in Illinois and Iowa, she became sole owner and chief investigator of Tallgrass Archaeology in Iowa City. The firm has seven employees and is qualified to conduct all levels of archaeological and architectural/historical studies in the Midwest.
“My parents provided for my education and were supportive of my choice, even though they feared I would not be able to make a living doing it,” Rogers told me.
She considers herself fortunate to enter the field at a time when federal environmental laws were being enacted that gave career archaeologists opportunities beyond teaching.
Tallgrass is hired by local, state and federal agencies, plus engineering firms and private landowners in some cases, who need an archaeological survey prior to a construction project.
“We complete our work before a project starts to ensure that significant sites and potentially ancient human remains are not destroyed,” Rogers said.
The work has taken her to so many interesting locations she could not pick a favorite.
“I was lucky to work on sites like Cahokia in Illinois, the City Brewery site in Des Moines, the Bonaparte Pottery site in southeast Iowa, Wickiup Hill in Linn County, and the Southwest Arterial and Bee Branch projects in Dubuque,” she said. “But I can also name hundreds more that were just as interesting.”
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She also assisted with Native projects in collaboration with both the Ho-Chunk and Meskwaki Nations.
Her most interesting artifact?
“That’s a tough question,” she said. “Most of what we find are mundane, everyday items. It’s always interesting to find pottery and points on precontact sites. I did find a sandal underneath a pot in the doorway to a kiva in Colorado. That was the only textile found on that site.”
Much of her work involves pioneer homesteads, town sites and industrial sites.
“We have found collections of discarded shoes and boots, and personal items such as buttons, jewelry, hair pins, dolls -- just about everything you can imagine,” she said. “Toy ceramics are always fun to find, but doll parts can be a little freaky to dig out of the dirt.”
Despite a career that can be tedious and try a person’s patience, Rogers has never regretted devoting her life to illuminating and documenting the past in such a professional way.
“Modern people can learn a lot from the mistakes and successes of past cultures,” she concluded. “There is that old saying that those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. That is probably never truer than it is today.”
Rogers’ colleagues have high praise for her leadership role promoting the importance of historical preservation in Iowa with so many longstanding contributions.
“She doesn’t mind the outdoors and the wind and the rain and digging in a trench and digging in the mud to uncover important evidence,” said Mary Bennett, special collections coordinator for the State Historical Society.
“An astounding number of resources bear the fingerprints of Leah Rogers’ conscientious, curiosity-driven research,” added Susan Kloewer, administrator of the state society. “Her trustworthy work will serve future generations of researchers from Iowa and across the country.”
This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Mount Vernon archaeologist honored by Iowa for lifetime of work
